


from pawn to king

by macabre



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Bond learns first from Q is that he'll never win another chess match again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from pawn to king

“And this one would be easier to get on and off quickly in a dire situation.” Q demonstrates with some gadget Bond is sure he doesn’t need for a quick trip to the Russian Embassy. He hums in agreement, moving one of his knights finally. 

Without looking, Q somehow makes another move instantaneously. Bond frowns. “You’re cheating.”

“Am not.” Coming from most people’s lips, it would sound childish, but somehow coming from Q’s it sounds perfectly prim. Q, who looks twenty on his best days. Well, nineteen, if he’s wearing one of those awful sweaters. 

Bond sighs and moves a pawn at random; this game was never his, and losing is the last game he’ll play for long. 

“Be a sport about it.” Again, Q doesn’t have to look up to make a move. He somehow anticipates Bond’s tactics already. It’s their third game together. Maybe that’s enough time for someone like Q. 

“Just take the bloody queen.” They both grin, but as soon as Q takes his victory, his face falls. He looks up at him finally.

“Did you have any questions?”

“None at all. I’ll see you around, Q.” He stands, his legs already cramped, his joints popping. “Good match.”

“Yes,” Bond might hear behind him as he leaves, “I look forward to them.”

 

 

“Back already?” Q yells over the music he’s playing in his little room. It’s something awfully melancholy, and yet he insists on listening to it at rock-and-roll volumes. “Did you bring me anything back?”

“Oh, you mean a souvenir like this?” Bond sets down one of those ridiculous dolls on his desk. He didn’t mean to, but he’s inadvertently started a collection of hideous decorations in Q’s office that rival M’s English bulldog. Before, everything was wires and hard drives. Dismal. Bond brings him back one thing from a trip to Reykjavik to prove that they have something worth bringing back, and now Q expects something every time. Spoiled brat. 

“Actually, I meant my equipment.”

“That.” Bond smiles, picking up their chessboard from where he hides it under a work desk. “That’s been misplaced. At present.”

“Right. Black or white?” Like he has to ask.

“Black.” 

“Right. My move then.”

 

 

One might suspect that a perk of being a highly trained and covert agent in the government would be that when injured on the job, they’d feed you better than jello and runny mash. They don’t. 

“You know just how to spoil me,” Bond says as Q enters his room with a sack of something greasy. 

“Your bedside manner is deplorable,” his younger friend comments, watching him eat. 

“You haven’t seen my bedside manner. Not yet.” He winks at Q, halfheartedly because his eyelids feel like sandpaper. 

It’s quiet for a while between them. Bond’s tired, and Q too probably, looking at his slumped posture. His quartermaster rummages through his bag and lifts the corner of the board out. 

“Match?”

“Maybe later.” 

“Right. I have work I should be doing.” Q stands, a shoe lace untied, Bond notes. He smiles at him.

“Could stay here and do it. I know you carry that damned antique laptop everywhere.”

“Classics can’t be replaced. I built it myself, you know.”

Grunting, Bond closes his eyes. Soon there’s tapping on keys, and a slow intake and outtake of air. It’s soothing. He might even fall asleep in the damned hospital room finally. 

“Besides, my own system is the only one who runs a challenging match.” 

“Piss off.”

 

 

The first time they see each other outside of headquarters is a complete accident, but it gives Bond a chance to see the slightly inebriated side of Q, and then allows him to get him fully inebriated.

“How many have you had?” Q asks, or shouts. 

“Six.” 

“I don’t like this game.” Q shivers; he’s wearing an extra baggy sweater but no coat. There’s a hole peeking out in the lower back. Bond sticks his finger through it, Q yelping at the cold touch.

“Why do you keep this? This hole threatens to take half the jumper with it.”

Q shrugs. “Sentimentality, I guess.” 

Bond can’t imagine trying to hold onto all of his torn suits, most ruined beyond any feasible shape or texture. He sheds them with every job, and it feels good. Feels right.

“Take my jacket.” 

“No. I’m warm.” Q slides off the chair to his feet, clutching the bar momentarily for support. “And I’m going home now.”

Bond doesn’t offer to walk him home, but he follows him all the same to Q’s doorstep. Once he disappears inside, Bond heads to headquarters, where he’s doomed to boredom for the next few days.

 

 

“You have an awful poker face.” They’re trying a new game – that is, anything with cards. They’re slightly more evenly matched, but mostly on games involving any sort of character reading. Q isn’t as good as reading others as reading code. 

“Bugger.” He sighs, letting the cards fall dramatically from his hand. He watches Bond for a moment longer, as if he’s going to read all his secrets finally. All his lies, and his truths, as few as they may be to the other. 

“I suppose I should get you suited up for your next mission.”

“All work – “

“And no pleasure.” Q stands rather quickly, walking from one table to another, collecting things. There’s not much needed for this trip either, but Q always gives him things to experiment with. To play with, maybe. Maybe he thinks he’s being extra cautious.

“Bring me back something pretty,” Q says when pushing a small briefcase towards him. 

 

 

“M’s thinking of reassigning you with someone else in the Q branch instead of working with Q himself.” Moneypenny very directly confronts him streetside of headquarters.

It’s almost unheard of at his status; agents of his level always work directly with the quartermaster. Bond’s face must say everything needed saying, because Moneypenny goes on. 

“He’s worried about the nature of your relationship.” Her face cracks from serious into a grin. “Or really, I think he’s worried about Q doing his job efficiently enough. Or that you’re going to hurt his feelings. Or that you feel pressured to do something with him. I’m not sure.”

“I’m sorry – “ but Bond stops. He’s missed something. Or a lot. “The nature of our relationship? You mean when Q does his job by outfitting me for active duty?”

Her face falls straight. “But you know. Surely you know. Q barely talks to anyone outside of strict business, and that’s okay, because really the one time I tried he confused the hell out of me about some analytic nonsense that was meant to drive me away, I think. But – he likes you.”

Like is irrelevant. Helpful, not important. Moneypenny rolls her eyes and sighs. “As if you haven’t taken up with men before. Don’t be daft about it.”

“The mechanics are not unknown to me.” He grins at her, but really he’s wondering what he missed. Nothing. He’s missed nothing – Q’s breathing doesn’t increase when he enters the room, nor when he gets closer. He never fidgets, or gets restless. Doesn’t bite his lip and avoid eye contact. Q is just Q – collected. Calculated sometimes even. Still doesn’t have a poker face, still too brilliant for his own good or youth. 

“Right, well, I thought I’d warn you. M’s fond of you both. I can’t tell who he’s trying to protect more.”

As if a scrawny man barely out of boyhood could wreck Bond’s life, or reputation. 

 

 

Bond watches Q from the clear, glass wall on the other side of his lab. For once, he’s not typing, but scribbling furiously on notebook paper with pen. There’s black ink above his lip and on the side of his neck. He cocks his head to the side, looking at something, then crumbles it into a ball and tries to toss it into recycling. He misses. 

“I think that bin is less than five feet from you.” 

“You can only imagine how good I was in sport.” 

“I don’t want to hear you pestering me about the form of my pull-up ever again.” They both grin, and Q pushes away his papers. There’s more ink, all over his fingers. 

“You’re not due for anything,” Q comments quietly. 

“No. No, today I am here to fuel the rumor mill.” He sits at the stool next to Q. Their chessboard is nowhere in sight, and if he had to guess, has been recently relocated to Q’s apartment, permanently. 

“Silly, isn’t it?” But for the first time, there’s discernable emotion behind Q’s voice. It’s hidden under a shyness, but longing. So much longing. Or loneliness.

“What kind of game are we playing now?”

“A child’s game, I think.” 

Bond snatches Q’s wrist, faster than he might reach for his gun. Q jumps, but curls his fingers around the top of his hand, a question written all over his face. A stumped Q is a sight, Bond muses. 

“Are we? I’m not sure this is such an appropriate game for children.” 

Q snorts, pulling his hand away from Bond’s to touch one of his gifts sitting on the desk of front of them. None of them are large, or expensive. Many are not bought, but found. 

“I don’t care much for games.”

“Just challenges.” Bond’s never used any move on Q, not even for sport like he might with others in their office just for show, but for once he gives Q the cocked smile. Q barely smiles back.

“I suppose we aren’t meant to win every challenge.” He stands to do something, what, Bond will never know. He takes that wrist again, the one he could break with one finger, and pulls him back. 

“You could win this one. If you wanted.”

 

 

They play chess in Q’s apartment where Bond looses every piece of clothing before Q takes off a single item. They play poker on their flight to Berlin, where Q keeps one hand glued in Bond’s, sitting so close the agent sees every card the other man has. He loses some, he wins some.


End file.
